Philip Glass at New World

Philip Glass is a heavyweight of contemporary minimalism. Alongside auteurs such as Steve Reich and John Cage, Glass is, simply put, one of the biggest, boldest names in 20th-century music. And much like those peers in experimentation, his oeuvre delicately and delightfully blurs the line between the colloquially dubbed classical genre and avant-garde.

His legacy is mighty: A graduate of the University of Chicago and Juilliard, Glass honed his chops in the '60s under the tutelage of Nadia Boulanger and while transcribing the works of Ravi Shankar into Western notation. By 1974, he was leading his own ensemble and producing landmark works such as Music in Twelve Parts and the opera Einstein on the Beach. From that point, Glass never slowed, pumping out concertos, operas, and film scores (The Truman Show, The Hours, and The Illusionist, among others) while scooping up a flurry of awards at the Golden Globes, Grammys, and Oscars.

His performance Thursday will feature a broad swath of now-revered compositions for solo acoustic piano dating back to 1976, as well as his most recent Etudes, making this an excellent performance for newcomers and loyal fans alike.